Admiralty Small Craft Charts: Getting the Best Value

Admiralty have been through a few iterations of their small craft chart offering for leisure sailors. Having started with individual folded charts (much like the single charts from Imray), they moved into ready-made folio packs (like Imray chart packs) and they have now come back to individual charts, but organised into folios.

Admiralty small craft history

Why the change?

It's no secret that Admiralty see their future in electronic charts. The UKHO's long-term intention is to withdraw from paper chart production, but they've pushed back the dates more than once. The current position is that paper charts will remain available until at least 2030, with elements of the portfolio being withdrawn on a case-by-case basis in the meantime. For leisure sailors, it's reasonable to think small craft charts could stick around a while longer still – they serve a market that isn't covered by ECDIS and where demand for paper remains strong.

What about now?

Lovers of paper charts, fear not! Admiralty moved to print-on-demand a few years ago, and it may well be the saviour of the paper chart. It's logistically much simpler than the old system. Gone are the days of mass-printing new editions which were sent to distributors who needed a small army to keep them up-to-date until they were sold. Now Admiralty agents can print directly from the latest file version as long as there's a stock of watermarked Admiralty paper and enough ink in the printer!

How does this affect small craft charts?

Small craft charts are print-on-demand too. If you haven't bought Admiralty leisure charts for a while, the system has changed quite a bit from the old folio packs. Here's what you need to know.

A note on buying charts: We organise charts into folio bundles on our website because it makes browsing easier, but you absolutely don't need to buy a whole folio. Each chart is sold individually – pick only the ones you need, from any combination of folios, and you'll still get the volume discounts. We know clicking through dozens of charts can be a pain, so if you'd prefer, just drop us a message with the chart numbers you're after and we'll sort the rest.

Admiralty small craft folios (click to see the range)

The discounts

Admiralty's old small craft folio packs were priced around £54 at the time for anywhere from 10 to 25 charts. The new print-on-demand charts have a base price of £17.80 each, which seems like a massive price hike. But Admiralty are well aware that customers would flee to alternatives if they needed to pay full price for a lot of charts. So they introduced a stepped discount system:

We did the maths

Thankfully we didn't quite look like this

When our customers get in touch for advice, we often find ourselves recommending buying more charts, and not for the reason you think. Yes, we're a business and we want to make money, but not at the expense of providing the best value and customer service.

So, we've done the maths for you. Here's how much it costs to buy up to 30 charts. We've highlighted the quantities where you actually save money by buying more charts.